In my animation, it depicts a rose growing in concrete. This metaphor is an extremely important part of my goals for my future teaching career. As I mentioned when previously discussing my future classroom, I am planning to join the Peace Corps initially after graduating and then when I return, I am hoping to work with under-repressented youth in an inner-city area.
I first heard the metaphor of a rose growing in concrete when I was in elementary school and heard 2pac's song, "The Rose That Grew from Concrete," (you can listen to the song here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFsQRm3Udo4). When I first heard the song, I was in elementary school, I think it was released when I was in either first or second grade. At this time, I didn't understand the metaphor, I thought the song was just about a flower. As I got older, and heard the song again when the radio played throwbacks, I started to understand the song better and thought it was about 2pac's background growing up in a bad area but somehow he still made it and became famous. I now understand that this song is applicable to the lives of a large majority of children who have forces, like concrete, working against them.
I revisited the theme of a rose growing from concrete once again while I was volunteering in South Africa. During the day, I taught students from a background of extreme poverty. In the evening the volunteers had discussion groups and one night we watched a lecture (very similar to a TED talk) given at chapmen university by Jeff Duncan-Andrade called "Note to Educators: Hope is Required When Growing Roses in Concrete." I highly recommend watching it to everyone, even if you are not planning to be a teacher, it is an extremely powerful speech (it's a little long but it's worth it).
(The link to watch the speech can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7ftSDiILbI)
Duncan made references to 2pac's song when discussing the metaphor but the part that really stuck with me was when he brought it into an educational context. He talks a lot about the background that some of our students are coming from; a student who's father is abusive to his mother and this makes it difficult for him to study at home, the student starts to fall behind in his classes, after school tutoring is offered but if the student stayed, he'd have to walk home, alone, through gang territory because the school bus was his only ride. The student might not be eating properly, or maybe the student has an older sibling who got involved with a gang and was killed. You, as the teacher, can't understand this, because you don't live in a concrete jungle, you drive home to your house in the suburbs in your nice Subaru.
Duncan talks about ways in which teachers can be aware of and attentive to the needs of the students who might be that rose growing in concrete. My goal as an educator is to help that rose growing from concrete, to make sure that they don't get swept up by all of the gang activity and crime. I want to make sure that these students make it to graduation, and hopefully even college.
inspire hope in my students and make sure they know that they can make it in the world and should never give up on their dreams and goals. It was beautiful to see how this was accomplished at the school I volunteered at in South Africa, and I hope to be able to do that for my students in my future classroom, no matter where I end up.
As far as technology goes, it obviously won't be as readily available to students if I am working in a third world country or even a poorly funded, inner-city school, as I hope to do in the future. With that being said, any technology that is available, I want to make sure that my students have access to. I want my students, especially the ones who don't have access to technology at home, be able to fully understand how it works at what they can do with it because in this day and age, being able to work with technology is a necessary skill.
No comments:
Post a Comment